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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Police have arrested a Villanova University history professor and accused her of fatally slitting her 6-month-old daughter’s throat.

The girl, Raya Donagi, was found bleeding and unconscious Monday after her grandmother called 911 about 9 a.m. She was pronounced dead at the grandmother’s St. Paul home.

Relatives told police that the girl’s mother, Mine An Ener, “had inflicted the fatal injuries to the infant,” police Sgt. Janet Dunnom said. Police said Miss Ener also confessed to the killing, but prosecutors had not charged her with a crime as of early yesterday.

Miss Ener, a professor at Villanova University in Pennsylvania, had recently returned to Minnesota with her daughter to be with family as she struggled with depression, police and relatives said.

Miss Ener, 38, told police she suffered from postpartum depression and was on medication. She also said the child had suffered from some physical ailments — at one point, the child was fed through a feeding tube — and she just wanted to give the baby some relief.

“She felt the baby was suffering,” said police Sgt. Bruce Wynkoop.

Autopsy results are pending.

Miss Ener, who grew up in St. Paul, was a graduate of St. Paul Central High School and went on to St. Paul’s Macalester College. After earning her doctoral degree at the University of Michigan, Miss Ener started at Villanova in 1996.

“She’s had a very good and strong record here,” said John Johannes, vice president of academic affairs at Villanova. “She’s being published and she’s a good scholar. She is very accomplished.”